I was having a hard time finding a good guide of how to get this working, most tutorials were using the Iphone version and wireless, or were to vague to be all that helpful. I got the tether to work yesterday after a good chunk of time tweaking and playing. I will give you guys a tutorial so it can be helpful to others. Right now I'm writing off the top of my head, but will fix this when i get home and can set it back up.

One big hint I can give, is if you travel with your xbox (like I do) trying to set it up so it will just work when you plug it in at home will be a huge bonus, so you arn't reconfiguring things every time you want to do this.

Because of this, I am assuming a 192.168.1.xxx network, which is what i use at home and on my travel router.

*Note - It has been noted that updating using PDANet has not been working for most individuals, be sure to update your system software and check for game updates prior to using PDANet or you may receive MTU errors.

Get PDANet installed and working on your Droid and PC (this is as easy as getting the App and the windows installer)

You will notice that when you set everything up, that windows (i did this on win7 64 bit) will list PDA net as a modem connection. Right click on that connection and go into properties.

Under the Sharing tab, click the enable other connections to share this connection. Now if you are on a laptop like I am, you will have to choose between your LAN or WIFI connection to share. I used LAN, but I would guess the WIFI is the same setup other than connecting to your computer's wifi on the xbox.

At the bottom of the sharing window there is a settings button (on the sharing tab) to define application ports that the connected computer will share, I am not sure if this is required, but I did it regardless.

You need to enter the ports 1 at a time, and where it asks what IP will be using this port, you will enter the IP for the Xbox, which we will configure

Once you get all the ports setup (can anyone confirm if this is needed?) Go to the LAN connection and go into it's properties.

Give your LAN connection a static IP (I used 192.168.1.2), 255.255.255.0 Mask, and I believe I gave it no gateway. Again I used 192.x.x.x because this is my home network and giving the xbox a static IP in my normal network range will keep it working when I move it. (if you are able, you can give your laptop the ip of your gateway router usually 192.168.1.1, you can do this if your laptop is not going to be connected to your network while you use PDANet and plan on using the phone data connection. This works nicely when trying to keep your Xbox plug and play, since you will be simulating your home network router ip)

You need to set your MTU for your connection higher than 1392 for the xbox to work, the application here http://www.dslreports.com/drtcp will allow you to do this without entering your registry (Thanks JoeManji) *Keep in mind that your xbox won't see the changes until your reboot.

Plug xbox into your LAN port on your PC, Crossover is not needed on newer PCs

You can now startup PDANet connection, I use the USB, and unless you have a good reason, this should work best for you.

Give your Xbox an ip within the range that you gave your PC LAN port, so if your PC is 192.168.1.5, you can give the Xbox anything in the 192.168.1.xxx space. Subnet 255.255.255.0, and the gateway is the IP of the PC LAN port. You need to provide a DNS server for the Xbox, the IP of the PC LAN port will work, but I like to give it a secondary as 8.8.8.8 in case (Googles free DNS)

You should be able to connect to XBL now, but may have to manually connect (Guide button - Connect to XBL).

NOTE What I have noticed in testing this, is that if your Xbox is on when you start PDANet, you will likely get the MTU error when connecting to XBL, to fix this, restart your Xbox while PDANet is up and running.

I will check this over when I get home and tweak the settings if need be. My Droid gets around 1000kbps down and 644kbps up which is way better than my hotel wifi.

I have not had a chance to see the bandwidth usage playing online (MW2), but I was planning on making this a backup to using my hotel wifi for nights when the connection is extra bad. In general online games arn't horrible hogs of bandwidth, but I wouldn't go streaming netflix or movies over it.

UPDATE - got some questions about the free vs paid version of PDA net. As far as I can tell you do NOT need the paid version of PDANet to have this working beyond the trial. XBL does not use HTTPS, and to my knowledge my trial is expired when I did this.

Couple things to try and let me know if it works or not:

MTU: someone try to set up PDANet above, but skip the MTU changing step, I am unsure if it is needed, or if I forgot to reset my Xbox like I later discovered can be a MTU error issue (step 9-10)

Check if step 5 is needed, by not setting up these ports and doing the other setup steps. If XBL connects with a Open Nat, you won't need to do step 5. I do get a OPEN NAT with ports open over vzw network.

Next Steps:
When I play MW2 over the next couple days, I will keep track on my bandwidth usage to give you a idea what a typical gaming session might cost in terms of data.

Anyways, from the PS3 standpoint, the instructions should be the same up until you set up the Xbox, in this case set the PS3 up the same as you would the Xbox, and it should work. Most of the tutorial involves setting up your PC to handle the bridge between the phone and the gaming system.

Latency wise, after two days of playing, I find it to be very playable, although there is a bit of lag altho not horribly so. I like to look at it as, if you have access to a real connection, use it, but if you are without internet or the speeds of that internet are below 1mb, then the tether is a suitable alternative.

It's going to depend on where you live probably and how the internet routes I found it completely unplayable

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Absolutely, there are a lot of factors outside your control. Where do you live and do you have the Speed Test app that you can see what your Up/Down is? I have been getting a consistent 1000 kbps down and ~600kbps up with a ping of 141ms in the Columbus OH area. Are you in an area with decent 3g coverage?

In the case of gaming the Ping is the real determining factor of the enjoyable experience. I remember the days of 250ms ping on dial up, so to me anything at or below 150ms is playable because I know how to compensate for it. I guess if you are used to pings like 50ms then a ping of 150ms could be totally unplayable for you since your looking at a 3x slower response from a server.

Hmm for some reason, I'm still getting the minimum MTU setting error. I've gone to the registry and set it to 1500 for the LAN adaptor, and I've also tried setting the phone adaptor to 1500. I've also restarted my laptop and xbox multiple times, making sure pdanet was running before turning on my xbox. Any ideas?

Hmm for some reason, I'm still getting the minimum MTU setting error. I've gone to the registry and set it to 1500 for the LAN adaptor, and I've also tried setting the phone adaptor to 1500. I've also restarted my laptop and xbox multiple times, making sure pdanet was running before turning on my xbox. Any ideas?

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Couple things to be sure of, is to be sure you registry tweaked the proper connection. The easiest way to confirm this is to check the MAC address of your adapter (in the connection setting properties), the registry will ID the connection by MAC if you look in the registry values.

I don't know how you would get it set like this, but be sure that you don't have a router between your xbox and PC (like if you plugged your PC into a router and the xbox into the router) The connection should be direct PC to Xbox.

Third, You did open all the ports like in the instructions correct?

It is hard to pinpoint why you would still be getting a MTU error, let me sniff around to see if there is a tool that can determine your MTU settings on a LAN port.

I tweaked the MTU settings of both the lan connection and the pdanet one. I identified the correct ones by ip address, so I know I had the ones I was looking for.

I don't have it plugged into a router (I actually don't have one); it's plugged directly into the laptop.

I tried it without opening the ports, since you requested that someone see if it works without that step, but after getting the MTU error again, I opened the ports you specified, and I still have the same problem.

No worries, I know it's hard to tell my problem, especially when you can't see my computer. I'm wondering if it might be different for me since you're on windows 7, and I'm on xp. Or could there possibly be something else you changed while trying to figure this out and forgot about?

Thanks for your help, and please let me know if you find anything else that might be helpful.